TECH TALK By Paul Motter (MF Networx) What flavor of DSL would you like today? (March 10, 1997) -- While many of us sit here waiting and wondering when the RBOC potentates are going to deem us worthy enough for their ADSL offerings, under our noses companies like PAIRGAIN TECHNOLOGIES <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(Nasdaq: PAIR)") else Response.Write("(Nasdaq: PAIR)") end if %> are already offering alternative DSL products. ASCEND COMMUNICATIONS INC. <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(Nasdaq: ASND)") else Response.Write("(Nasdaq: ASND)") end if %> announced this week (March 10) a new add-in card to round out its MultiDSL product line of adaptor cards for its MAX family of carrier class multi-protocol switches. The company already offers a card for IDSL, a digital subscriber line version of ISDN, which can be sent over twisted pair cable and allows end-users to use existing ISDN equipment without all of the contortions normally associated with installing ISDN service. This customer equipment is generally much cheaper (~$300) than current ADSL modems, which cost anywhere from $1,000-$2,500, if you can find anyone offering the service. Announced this week is a new card that offers a symmetric digital subscriber line, or SDSL. SDSL allows two-way communication at 768 kilobits-per-second, 6 times faster than ISDN, or 27 times faster than your 28.8 modem. The fact that it is symmetric is an added bonus since it enables two-way applications like IP telephony, video-conferencing, game playing, and application sharing/whiteboarding. The MAX family, MAX TNT, 4002 and 4004 also currently have add-in cards for IDSL, ADSL-CAP and ADSL-DMT. UUNet Technologies, one of the world's largest Internet Service Providers (solidly in the Ascend camp) is announcing digital subscriber line services at Spring Internet World '97 in conjunction with WorldCom. They plan to offer IDSL nationwide. Microsoft bugs!! As if MICROSOFT CORP. <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(Nasdaq: MSFT)") else Response.Write("(Nasdaq: MSFT)") end if %> didn't have enough problems with its recent security debacle concerning ActiveX controls in its Internet Explorer browser, a group of students at the Worcestor Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts have discovered a new problem for end-users of the product. They uncovered a way for a web author to access a user's files and cause them to execute simply by renaming them with a .URL or .LNK extension first. Microsoft issued another patch for the browser last week. Is everyone out to get Bill? Circulating on the Internet is a hacked .DLL file that will turn a $5 evaluation copy of Office '97, a $279 product retail, into a full blown version. Sun Microsystems Introduces Java Based Browser -- Do all these MSIE gremlins mean the time is ripe for a new browser to enter the market? We all know SUN MICROSYSTEMS <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(Nasdaq: SUNW)") else Response.Write("(Nasdaq: SUNW)") end if %> would like nothing better than to "accumulate" a chunk of the Microsoft market, which is why the company announced a formal coalition with Oracle, Netscape, and IBM to standardize the Net PC. Well, Sun just announced a browser of its own to compete head to head with both Netscape and Microsoft Explorer. As if two browsers duking it out head to head are not enough, Sun plans to differentiate its browser by making it the first browser written entirely in Java code, the programming language created for the Internet. It will incorporate FTP, e-mail, MIME and encryption, but it will not have a news reader. It will run on Sun Solaris, Windows 95 and NT, but not yet for Macintosh. The only drawback seems to be that you must download the Sun Java Developer's Kit 1.1 and install it on your computer before you can run the browser.

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